What if they built an airport and nobody came?
Politicians and boosters in the downstate Belleville-East St. Louis area are about to find out. And their experience ought to be a sobering lesson for those in a hurry to build a third Chicago-area jetport at far south suburban Peotone.
In a few weeks doors will swing open at the new MidAmerica Airport, a $313 million passenger and freight complex located near Mascoutah, 24 miles east of downtown St. Louis. Trouble is, there likely won’t be any passengers or freight.
St. Clair County officials, who launched the project more than a decade ago with visions of generating 20,000 jobs and $900 million a year in economic activity, have been unable to land a single tenant airline or air cargo company.
The airlines had warned county officials that this would be the likely outcome. They warned that no tenant at busy Lambert-St. Louis International Airport would jump the Mississippi River to Mascoutah, even for lower rents and free parking. But the temptation to put a passenger terminal along the underutilized runways of Scott Air Force Base was too great.
Fortunately for St. Clair County taxpayers, if not for the rest of us, local pols like Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) prevailed on the federal and state governments to shoulder most of the cost. The feds contributed $233 million, and Illinois came up with $60 million.
It is possible, of course, that MidAmerica one day will live up to the consultants’ forecast: 2 million passengers a year. In the meantime, Peotone backers like odd-couple Congressmen Jesse Jackson Jr. and Henry Hyde might want to join Gov. Jim Edgar at the Mascoutah ribbon-cutting.
Notice, gentlemen, that if you build it, they may not come.
